WE all have our little gripes about publicans. They force us to pay ludicrous prices for beer, for a start. They insist on shouting rudely at midnight when they no longer want us on the premises and many of them to believe that they, and they alone, do not have to pay tax. Most irritatingly of all, they charge a punitive 30p for a local telephone call.
Moan as we might about some of their habits, few of us stand up to question the morality of the publican's trade.
While the drug pusher is portrayed as the all purpose demon of the late 20th century - an all round bad egg - there is hardly anyone who suggests that pedlars of alcohol are also living oft immoral earnings.
Publicans did not always have it so easy. In the last century, with the popularity of militant teetotalism, bar owners were frequently the objects of scorn. Father Henry Young, one of the early temperance campaigners, railed against publicans and their corrupting influence.
In one of his memorable broadsides in the 1820s, the Dublin priest warned that publicans would "have a most dreadful account to render in the divine tribunal of our Sovereign Judge after death". The gates of hell were open.
Counter attractions
Father Young set up coffee and buttermilk stalls in Dublin in a vain attempt to lure the city's soaks away from "those pestiferous erections, the public houses". In his fiery tract, A Short Essay on the Grievous Crime of Drunkenness, he castigated alcohol as "a witch to the senses, a demon to the soul, a thief to the purse, the wife's woe, the husband's misery, the parent's disgrace, the children's woe, and the beggar's companion."
Dear old Michael Noonan's recent national policy document on alcohol amounted to a half glass of watery, lukewarm shandy when compared to Father Young's gallon of high octane, rocket propelling hooch. After five years of in depth research, after half a decade of rumination by a team of highly trained liquor experts, Mr Noonan's report came to the dazzling conclusion that it is better to drink moderately than to excess.
"Less is better" is the imaginative new slogan. Why drink 10 pints when you might be just as happy with five?
According to the research the ill effects of drink cost Irish society £325 million every year, but of course, no Government can afford to be too concerned about alcohol.
One has to balance the losses', with the enormous benefits through tax revenue, employment and sports sponsorships. Not only does the drunkard pay much more than his fair share of tax, he is also considerate enough to die years earlier than other mortals, saving the authorities vast sums in pensions and healthcare costs.
Temperance binge
Michael Noonan asks us politely to drink a little less, but can one imagine the scenes of chaos that would ensue if a significant chunk of the public got it into its head to give it up the drink completely? Would he be entirely happy if some of the scenes from his home city of Limerick from the middle of the last century were repeated?
In 1839, the people of Limerick and its surrounding area went on a wild temperance spree. According to the Limerick Reporter, in one weekend in November of that year, 150,000 drinkers took the pledge from Father Theobald Matthew. Similar scenes of rampant teetotalism were repeated throughout the country as the Capuchin monk bombarded the populace with temperance medals.
If a similar epidemic of abstinence were repeated in our own time, the State would surely go bankrupt. Governments have traditionally had good reason to be wary of hardline abstainers.
During the heyday of temperance, Establishment figures saw the abstinence movement as a fiendish plot to unseat the ruling Tory party by depriving it of tax revenues. Teetotalism became identified with the matinal cause. Writing in the Nation in 1843, Thomas Davis described drunkenness as the "the luxury of despair the saturnalia of slaves"; temperance, on the other hand, was the "first fruit of deep sown hope, the offering of incipient freedom".
Daniel O'Connell also flirted with the abstinence movement when it suited him, but with strong allies in the drinks trade, he quickly dumped the crusade - when it declined in popularity.
The Tory newspapers may have liked to portray the Irish working class as a drunken rabble, but nothing set them one edge more than the sight of less well off Dubliners marching in good order through the city streets in temperance parades. To the Dublin Evening Mail, the parades were "demonstrations of a treasonable conspiracy".
Temperance festivals became a popular form of revelry in the 19th century. Huge crowds turned out to watch the processions through the city on St Patrick's Day. Men even flocked out of the pubs, drinks in hand, to have a look at the spectacle.
Reformed drunkards parade
Teetotalling bands played loud music, there were floats and colourful banners and a parade of reformed drunkards on horseback. A bootmaker, Mr John Smith, "King of the Reformed Drunkards" was the hero of the 1839 parade as he rode a white charger through the streets.
Inevitably, there were complaints about these temperance binges. Nobody likes to see his fellow man go overboard with moderation According to an account of the procession in Dublin Pub Life and Lore by Kevin Kearns, churchgoers complained about the playing of loud music by teetotallers outside Sunday services.
After one parade, a policeman grumbled about the "the teelotal societies with their band nuisances. We have great difficulty in making them stop when they come near a church where divine worship is going on," he complained. "Assaults have arisen out of them."
There was a minor riot during a Dublin procession when a teetotalling drum major reportedly attacked a policeman who was trying to quell a disturbance. Other members of the temperance band quickly joined in the scrap. You just can't trust those teetotallers.